Kate Lancaster and the Vulcan Pulse Laser

Just to probe the depths of my inner nerd (like even bigger than the nerds in Revenge of the Nerds, part ONE), I found this great video today through Physics World – Kate Lancaster, a physicist at the Vulcan laser at the the Central Laser Facility in the UK, did an interview with a Physics World.  I’ve embedded it below.

To give you an idea of how unfathomably powerful the Vulcan laser is one zetawatt per centimeter, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts.  I had to look that up – I had no idea how many zeroes a zeta had!  It’s 1X10^21 watts per centimeter.  That is unbefreakinglievably powerful.  My mind cannot comprehend it – in the video, the narrator/interviewer says that the Vulcan laser is as powerful as all of the sunlight on Earth, condensed into the size of the tip of a human hair.

Check out the video – it is only for the super-geeks among us – but it’s a quick little awesome interview about the Vulcan laser and what goes on there.  I just wish they included the name of the interviewer!  What a thing to leave out!